Hold time

Hold time is a customer experience & service metric that quantifies the amount of time the user stays on hold. Situations that may lead to a customer being put on hold include:

– An influx of inbound calls where the customer is added to a queue of users waiting to talk to a representative

– The agent needs time to source information before re-engaging with the customer

– The customer escalates the situation and has to wait to be connected to the agent’s manager

– The customer is connected with the wrong agent, who then has to route the call to someone who’s more equipt to handle the customer’s needs

Decreasing average hold time is a common KPI for most customer experience initiatives. CX professionals are relying more on advanced technologies like AI agents and self-service options that prevent the user from ever being put on hold and freeing up time for live agents to deal with more complex issues that absolutely require human intervention.